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Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Looking at the Regionals Data

It's been a little over a month since the Wave 5 Regionals Season ended. Let's take a look back through the data and see if we can find any interesting patterns.

If you haven't looked at it before, you can find the data from the Wave 5 Regionals HERE.

You can also find data for Wave 2 and Waves 3/4. What am I trying to answer?The
primary question this data hopes to address is "What are the
differences, if any, between the fleets showing up at the top tables and
the general attendance of Armada Regional Tournaments?"Now that we have more data available we can also look at: "How
has the composition of Regional tournament fleets changed as new waves of ships have been added to Armada?"Is this data any good at all?I think so, yes.It is certainly improved from the first data set.For
the entire previous season we only had the full data for 8 tournaments
and 143 fleet lists. For the Wave 3/4 season we have full data for 10
tournaments and 181 fleet lists. For Wave 5 that improved to full data from 14 tournaments and 256 fleets. Having more full tournament data is a
huge help with the validity and reliability of the data.

Even though they were part of the same season I have chosen to keep the Wave 3/4 season and Wave 5 season separate. The samples sizes are still plenty large and it's nice to see the impact of the wave change. The sample size for the winners column can be relatively small. For that reason I tend to focus more on the Top 4 column in the data and comparing it to the All column. The sample sizes are better and my gut tells me that anyone who managed a Top4 finish had a fleet capable of winning.So,
thanks to a lot of help from volunteers the data set is growing more robust each time. That's
really awesome.So, what is it good for?Starting and sometimes settling arguments? It won't help you build an ultimate unbeatable
fleet. It will give you an idea of what kinds of fleets you might
expect to see at a Regional. It tells you the frequency of what is
showing up and how often it is successful, but in no way measures skill
or luck.What have we learned so far? We will roll through this one section at a time.AttendanceAttendance numbers are fairly similar across all three seasons with an average of about 18 players per tournament. I was expecting some growth, but there were some inconveniently located tournaments this season that may have impacted things.Rebels vs Imperials

All

Bottom 1/4

Top 1/2

Top 8

Top 4

Winners

Wave 2

Rebels

45%

52%

50%

50%

47%

33%

Imperials

55%

48%

50%

50%

53%

67%

Wave 3/4

Rebels

59%

61%

63%

68%

61%

69%

Imperials

41%

39%

37%

32%

39%

31%

Wave 5

Rebels

50%

47%

56%

57%

59%

58%

Imperials

50%

53%

44%

43%

41%

42%

The Wave 3/4/5 season was certainly the opposite of the Wave 2 season. It was apparently the Rebels turn to take over the top tables. It evened out a bit with the arrival of Wave 5.I'm not entirely sure where the switch came from. I noticed that some of the more successful fleet types for the Imperials in Wave 2, didn't really show up in the more recent tourneys.AdmiralsIn Wave 2 the 5 most commonly used and most successful admirals were
Motti, Screed, Rieekan, Ackbar, and Dodonna. In Waves 3/4 the most
commonly used and most successful admirals are Rieekan, Ackbar, Motti,
Screed, and Dodonna. For Wave 5 it is much harder to call after the top 3. Rieekan, Motti, and Ackbar are still the three most successful, but by a less wide margin and there is a large group of successful admirals I could order from 4-9.

Admirals

All

Top 4

Winner

Wave 2

Motti

23%

27%

37%

Rieekan

16%

19%

26%

Screed

20%

16%

22%

Ackbar

14%

13%

7%

Dodonna

6%

8%

0%

Wave 3/4

Rieekan

18%

32%

31%

Motti

17%

20%

19%

Ackbar

10%

14%

19%

Dodonna

13%

9%

13%

Screed

9%

7%

13%

Wave 5

Rieekan

13%

22%

16%

Motti

17%

22%

11%

Ackbar

6%

12%

11%

Madine, Screed, Cracken

7%

Ozzel, Mothma, Dodonna

5%

I do think that the coolest thing about the Wave 5 data is that 13 of 16 admirals show up in Top 4 fleets and 11 of 16 managed to win a tournament. This speaks to some exceptional balance in the game's design. Just about any admiral can find success at a serious tournament. Garm, Tagge, and Konstantine do seem to be bringing up the rear in regards to admiral performance in the game.Rieekan and Motti's success is I think less about their power levels and more about how well they fit in a variety of fleet types. Neither needs to really be built around and can work with several different archetypes. It really isn't surprising how frequently they show up.

Another way to look at the admiral data is to compare the percent difference between how often they show up overall and in the Top 4.

Top 4

Dodonna

-51%

Mothma

-1%

Garm

Ackbar

59%

Rieekan

39%

Cracken

45%

Madine

32%

Sato

-83%

Tarkin

-33%

Motti

63%

Screed

19%

Vader

-64%

Ozzel

24%

Tagge

Konstantine

Jerrjerrod

-51%

From this data you can see some admirals that do not show up as often but do find success when they do. Cracken, Madine, and Ozzel don't see a ton of play, but the players using them seem to find a relatively high level of success. I think lots of players were eager to try out Sato, but don't seemed to have cracked him yet given his poor relative performance.I should point out that two of my favorite admirals, Garm and Vader, are some of the worst Regional performers.

Fleet Size

Fleet size has definitely increased since Wave 2 with a little less than one more activation per fleet. That is definitely the influence of the flotilla. But the flotilla seems to have more brought up the bottom than increased the overall average. The number of low activation fleets has dropped drastically

There is a slight trend towards larger fleets at the top tables, but not a really large one, just 4.2 to 4.5 ships.

# of Ships - Top 4

Wave 2

Wave 3/4

Wave 5

2

15%

7%

2%

3

32%

11%

7%

4

28%

39%

44%

5

20%

27%

37%

6

5%

14%

7%

7

0%

2%

3%

The real change since the emergence of the flotilla has been the relative disappearance of 2 and 3 ship fleets. It has not caused the top end to really shift too much at all. Most everything is clustered around 4-5 activations. I think this is due to the flotilla giving fleets that aren't a swarm a way too add in additional activations.

Squadron Count

I'm not even sure what to make of this data. People are bringing more squadrons since Wave 2, but the average number of squadrons in Top 4 fleets haven't budged across the 3 data sets. Pretty remarkable actually.

All

Top 4

Wave 2

20%

12%

Wave 3/4

6%

11%

Wave 5

9%

7%

Fleets with no squadrons at all have drastically reduced since Wave 2. They still can be successful, but certainly aren't as common.

Points on Squads

All

Bottom 1/4

Top 1/2

Top 8

Top 4

Winners

No Squads

9.5%

14.3%

6.7%

7.8%

7.4%

7.1%

1-40 pts

6.0%

5.7%

6.7%

4.9%

7.4%

0.0%

41-80 pts

23.0%

21.4%

21.8%

18.6%

16.7%

35.7%

81-120 pts

33.7%

35.7%

31.1%

33.3%

31.5%

14.3%

121-134 pts

27.8%

22.9%

33.6%

35.3%

37.0%

42.9%

Even though the absolute number of squads hasn't changed much, players do appear to be spending more on their squads. I think the new aces from Corellian Conflict and some other more expensive options are behind this.

Deployments

Overall the number of deployments has been increasing, but then the trend towards high deployments doing better has been going down. I guess more players are understanding the importance of Turn 0.Ships

Rebel Ships

All

Top 4

% Difference

Wave 2

CR-90

53%

63%

23%

AF MkII

37%

43%

22%

Nebulon-B

32%

33%

10%

MC-30

44%

33%

-21%

Home One

42%

27%

-35%

Wave 3/4

Home One

23%

30%

31%

MC-30

40%

48%

22%

Nebulon-B

32%

37%

15%

CR-90

44%

44%

0%

GR-75

83%

81%

-2%

Wave 5

CR-90

36%

46%

26%

Nebulon-B

32%

37%

15%

MC-30

38%

43%

13%

Pelta

26%

29%

10%

GR-75

87%

91%

6%

Another big impact of the flotilla has been the general reduction in appearance of the CR-90 and Raider. Players are using the flotillas rather than the corvettes for extra activations. At least in the case of the CR-90 it is still seeing a fair amount of success when it is brought.

Imperial Ships

All

Top 4

% Difference

Wave 2

Gladiator

59%

65%

10%

Raider

52%

48%

-6%

ISD

57%

52%

-10%

VSD

21%

13%

-38%

Wave 3/4

Interdictor

20%

24%

18%

Gozanti

71%

82%

17%

Gladiator

59%

65%

10%

ISD

57%

47%

-18%

Victory

20%

12%

-41%

Wave 5

Gozanti

71%

88%

24%

ISD

64%

75%

18%

Gladiator

53%

58%

11%

Raider

32%

33%

5%

Arquitens

34%

29%

-14%

If there is a single ship that is doing well in the new Wave 5 meta, it's the ISD. Its relative performance has increased with each wave and it seems to be really doing well for the Imperials right now. To nobody's surprise, the Gladiator has been the consistent performer among Imperial ships for some time. One thing I did note, was the relative disappearance of multiple GSD fleets in in the Wave 3/4/5 season.

<edit>

I wanted to add that when I look at the data as a whole what I really see is a well balanced game with a variety of effective strategies. At this point I don't even track fleet archetypes as I don't feel it is particularly useful. There is an awesome variety of fleets that do well in these tournamnets and is speaks to a good job by the game designers.

</edit>

So, what do you think? This is just a quick overview. There is a lot more data in there to look at and discuss. Let me know if there are other questions and I will try to answer them as best as I can.